There is a continuous demand to design materials with comprehensive properties as the boundaries of human works extend to new branches of technological activities. For designing parts from new materials, it is essen-tial to consider the possible technological problems and economic aspects, however, not always the solution is evident. In this regard, multi-component high entropy materials (HEMs) have opened promising perspec-tives to be employed as both structural materials and coatings. This review paper summarizes the most im-portant factors affecting fabrication of HEA coatings with a defined level of functional properties. The proce-dure is presented as a hierarchical system of the effective factors which are divided into two groups: func-tional and exploitation demands to the coating properties and technological features of the coatings deposi-tion technique. We show that the most important factors in functional and exploitation demands are exploita-tion conditions and design/ergonomic properties, which determine the functional properties and subsequently material of the coatings. On the other hand, in technological features, parameters such as structural material (substrate), shape and dimension of the part, accuracy and surface finish and modes of the manufacturing process are critical ones and determine the coating deposition technique. This approach makes it possible to evaluate the importance of different factors on the exploitation conditions of HEAs coatings. By considering the published investigations, it is illustrated how to implement the proposed procedure to choose coatings which will be efficient for a definite exploitation condition.
